​Let’s face it.We have Satan himself as president. The world has become more and more tainted and abrupt. The harsh reality that we as parents come to is if we don’t teach our kids survival skills as quickly and as young as possible, they will still hear about those scary and detrimental topics from the streets. The streets and schools don’t love our children as we do. We would like to think that our children are angels and their little pretty ears and tongues are as sacred as the bible, but reality says differently.I remember accusing my husband of looking at porn for about a week straight. I was cursing him out every day because at the time, no one else lived in the house except for his mother, our 7-year old son, and our 6-year old daughter. One morning, after my husband left for work, my son came and asked me for password to my computer. With morning breath still fresh in the air, I lifted my head from the pillow long enough to blurt out the password and then proceeded back to another intimate session with my pillow being over protected by my saliva.Once the kids went off to school, I finally got up and headed to the computer. Ads poppin up everywhere. I can’t click on anything because there is just so many X-rated popups. I finally make my way into the history logs and realize that my 7-year old son was the one who had been watching porn on my computer.Funny thing is, when we confronted him about it, he was so innocently truthful about it.“Son, is someone at school ‘touching’ you inappropriately?”“No mom.”“…umm…it’s ok baby. Just tell mommy what going on.”“Nothing, mommy. Sometimes I just think about girls a lot.”What an eye-opening, jaw-dropping experience! Man!I was so confused yet so happy. With all the same sex activity taking place in the world today, I was so happy to find out my son…was ALL boy. Lol. However, I was also confused because I felt as though he was too young to know of these things.But just to play it safe, I sat my son down, explained the basics of sex and also diseases. It was at this time, I showed my children what herpes looked like. Some may disagree, but I felt as though I would prefer for my kids to learn about the harsh realities of life by listening and not always by experience.We cannot always protect our children, though. But we can prepare them by following a few simple rules:

Show your children love. Respect your feeling and listen to them and their needs. Most often times, kids exhibit certain negative behaviors outside of the home because they lack attention within the home.

Spend quality time. Just because the family participated in an event together, does not suffice for one on one time with that child or children. Give each child some one on one time.

Stay involved. Even as your kids grow older and more independent, stay engaged. Ask questions, participate in conversations with both your kids and their friends.

Make sure your kids are of a spiritual upbringing. While many people have their doubts about religion and spirituality, it is far better to bring a child up in a setting of religion than not. The purpose of this is to provide the child with morals. Without morals, our children are capable of many crimes, without remorse.

Teach them survival of the fittest. Children need to be taught early on that they will have good days and bad days. Teach them how to prepare for and appreciate bad days, yet taking advantage of the good days.

So the bottom line is, of course, for our first line of defense for protecting our children from having sex before marriage is abstinence, but more kids are having sex at younger ages these days. One of the main reasons is because of social media. Another reason is that the media, rappers, and everyone else in the limelight have given our little princes and princesses the impression that it is cool to take pics on IG while rollin up a J, or posing provocatively with booty shots. This is an example of advertisement. And what is the purpose of advertisement? To sell your product or service. These kids are too careless to understand this. So they buy into it.But what does this mean? They will do exactly what they want to do regardless of what we as parents tell them is best. So the next best thing to do is to keep it a ban with these kids and advise them to strap up. Ok. Sorry. For my older readers, keep it real with your kids and tell them to use condoms, jimmy hats, or whatever your choice of words are for your household.